If you're (still) wondering why Republicans are losing with women, this might help explain.

It would seem that Darrell Issa's investigation into the Benghazi attack might have revealed the location and staffing of a CIA facility near the consulate there, and that it might have been CIA ops who failed to save the Ambassador.

Anyone else think the effort to get to the bottom of what went wrong and the effort to embarrass the administration might, just might, be at cross purposes here?

What's next? Cut the CIA's budget? Oh wait, they're already doing that....

Just in case anyone was wondering. 

I predicted a Romney win b/c of a weak economy. 

Now Romney's racing toward a lead in the polls (or he's already there) while foreclosures are at a 5 yr. low and weekly unemployment claims are at a 4 yr. low (the 4 week moving average is at March levels, when over 200K jobs were created).

Memo to self: It's not solely the economy, stupid.

Also, we're currently witnessing homo economicus's failure as a model of human behavior.

Also, this sucks!! Is Obama gonna get his butt handed to him in the other debates too?

And HankP, for God's sake, what happened to your assurances that Romney was a bad politician and poor debater??! You lulled many of us into a false sense of security and I speak for many when I say that we're all lashing out at you in our hearts if not in our comments.

making Jim Lehrer look incredibly good as a debate moderator?

Michael Vick is once again a dog owner. Vick deserves whatever (nonviolent) backlash he suffers from this, and the trial judge on his case should be ashamed for not constructing the sentence in a way to make this impossible (say, by extending the prison sentence by several years (but still within the allowable limits) but suspending the extra time indefinitely on the condition that he never own a dog again).

Kevin Drum and Krugman both wrote yesterday about the IMF's finding that Euro austerity programs were tanking economies. Simply put: the more austerity in a given country, the worse the economic outcomes.

A common dodge is to suggest that maybe it's because those countries were in worse economic shape to begin with. In other words, austerity didn't cause the dire circumstances in Greece, it was the crappy Greek economic fundamentals what did it.

Not so fast, IMF thought of that too. So what they're doing is comparing economic forecasts from each country, since those forecasts take economic fundamentals for each country into account when they are made. And so guess what. Austerity countries perform worse than predicted, and their their non-austerity counterparts perform better than predicted, across the board. By a lot.

Oops. Policymakers already know which countries are in more economic trouble, and take that into account when making economic predictions. Even so, those forecasts are more wrong in countries with austerity programs than in countries without. 

We find the coefficient on planned fiscal consolidation to be large, negative, and significant....Overall, depending on the forecast source and the specification, our estimation results for the unexpected output loss associated with a 1 percent of GDP fiscal consolidation are in the range of 0.4 to 1.2 percentage points.

The economic experts, many the same as those demanding austerity, all seem to have stepped on their d*cks & drastically underestimated the negative economic effects of austerity. They implemented austerity expecting austerity to produce growth, and instead austerity programs appear to produce a greater than 1:1 reduction in economic output. There's a multiplier all right: it's frickin negative. Why, it's almost as though all of these economic experts are in the grip of an economic theory which is utterly invalid.

One hopes, but doubts remain.

http://dawn.com/2012/10/12/moment-of-truth/

For once, and at long last, Pakistanis appear to have woken up to the consequences of the extremism that has been allowed to take root in our country. The reaction to the attack on Malala Yousufzai is significant not just because of its scale and outrage, but because it is marked by something that is depressingly rare — across-the-board condemnation of the Taliban.

 

A handful of voices, even in parliament, have tried to link the incident to America’s role in Pakistan or implied that it was Malala’s own fault. Refreshingly, though, these have been drowned out by an outpouring of anger reflected in the strongly worded condemnation of the attackers in the National Assembly and Senate, the army chief’s resolve against the “twisted ideology” of the perpetrators, extensive media coverage, and civil society efforts from protest rallies to prayers for Malala in schools.

 

For once, the focus is on the threat to Pakistan from the intolerance in its own society, not on devising conspiracy theories, blaming foreign powers or coming up with justifications for terrorist acts.

6-0 Nationals after three innings--Bryce Harper has an RBI triple and a 415 ft solo homer already. It's a lot easier to play this game when you're not suffering from a nasty case of strep throat. *

The Clowns In Oslo take time out from smoking crack to give the Nobel Peace Prize to those guys in Brussels. Peace in our time!

Bartender says, "What can I get for you, Mr. Romney?"

...to set himself on fire and an Arab Spring was triggered. In China, the number is 45 and counting.

Lance Armstrong is a very bad man. Forget the stealing of glory and financial rewards from the people that didn't cheat... or the irreparable harm to the sport he loved. It's the intimidation of his former friends and colleagues that really turns my stomach.

http://www.pbase.com/cichallenge/image/146668614

BTW, this image of the Endeavour, linked above, is the best you will see anywhere, though I did just have to fix it a little more (grin)

Best Wishes, Traveller

I'm hanging out in napa with my wife and a bunch of friends. So again, F politics.

sincerely, Pranky

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/12/julia-gillard-sexism-austral...

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/...

I personally think Saddam Hussein has not been held sufficiently responsible for this disaster.  He could easily have avoided the invasion by taking the Gaddafi route.

We think we know what is happening in History, it's been 50 years now, Kennedy himself didn't know...(when people say things could be better in the United States and for the United States abroad...take this as a cautionary tale...things could be a hell of a lot worse)

Traveller

Since this is important, link with chilling and very good 12 minute video, especially the ending of the video, or full story below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19930260

Cuban missile crisis: The other, secret one

By Joe Matthews Journalist

Contrary to popular belief, the Cuban missile crisis did not end with the agreement between the US and Soviet Union in October, 1962. Unknown to the US at the time, there were 100 other nuclear weapons also in the hands of Cuba, sparking a frantic - and ingenious - Russian mission to recover them.

In November 2011, aware that the 50th anniversary of the most dangerous few weeks in history was less than a year away, my Russian colleague Pasha Shilov and I came across several new accounts that changed our perspective on the Cuban missile crisis and how much we thought we knew about it.

Growing up in Berkshire, England, through the nuclear paranoia of the 1980s, with Ronald Reagan's Cruise and Pershing missiles stationed only 30 miles away from my family home, I was inculcated with a keen awareness of Cold War brinkmanship.

Pasha grew up in Moscow and described how it was from the Soviet point of view - equally frightening by his account.

But what we've now learned about the chilling events of October and November 1962 has put our own experiences into perspective - and maybe given rise to a few more grey hairs along the way.

Our investigations took us to St Petersburg and the Soviet Submariners Veterans' Society via the National Security Archive in Washington DC, where Svetlana Savranskaya, the director of the Russian archives, told us an incredible story.

There had been a second secret missile crisis that continued the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war until the end of November 1962.

This extended the known missile crisis well beyond the weekend of 27-28 October, the time that had always been thought of as the moment the danger finally lifted with the deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev to withdraw the Soviet missiles in exchange for a US promise not to invade Cuba.

The secret missile crisis came about through an unnerving mix of Soviet duplicity, American intelligence failures and the mercurial temperament of Fidel Castro.

The Cuban leader, cut out of the main negotiations between the superpowers over the fate of the long range Soviet missiles stationed in Cuba, began to cease cooperation with Moscow.

Fearing that Castro's hurt pride and widespread Cuban indignation over the concessions Khrushchev had made to Kennedy, might lead to a breakdown of the agreement between the superpowers, the Soviet leader concocted a plan to give Castro a consolation prize.

The prize was an offer to give Cuba more than 100 tactical nuclear weapons that had been shipped to Cuba along with the long-range missiles, but which crucially had passed completely under the radar of US intelligence.

Khrushchev concluded that because the Americans hadn't listed the missiles on their list of demands, the Soviet Union's interests would be well served by keeping them in Cuba.

Kremlin number two, Anastas Mikoyan, was charged with making the trip to Havana, principally to calm Castro down and make him what seemed like an offer he couldn't refuse.

Mikoyan, whose wife was seriously ill, took the assignment knowing that the future of relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were on the line. Shortly after arriving in Cuba, Mikoyan received word that his wife had died, but despite this, he pledged to stay in Cuba and complete negotiations with Castro.

In the weeks that followed, Mikoyan kept the detail of the missile transfer to himself while he witnessed the mood swings and paranoia of the Cuban leader convinced that Moscow had sold Cuba's defence down the river.

Castro particularly objected to the constant flights over Cuba by American surveillance aircraft and, as Mikoyan learned to his horror, ordered Cuban anti-aircraft gunners to fire on them.

Knowing how delicate the state of relations were between the US and Russia after the worst crisis since World War II, US forces around the world remained on Defcon 2, one short of global nuclear war until 20 November.

Mikoyan came to a personal decision that under no circumstances should Castro and his military be given control of weapons with an explosive force equal to 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs.

He then extricated Moscow from a seemingly intractable situation which risked blowing the entire crisis back up in the faces of Kennedy and Khrushchev.

On 22 November 1962, during a tense, four-hour meeting, Mikoyan was forced to use the dark arts of diplomacy to convince Castro that despite Moscow's best intentions, it would be in breach of an unpublished Soviet law (which didn't actually exist) to transfer the missiles permanently into Cuban hands and provide them with an independent nuclear deterrent.

Finally after Mikoyan's trump card, Castro was forced to give way and - much to the relief of Khrushchev and the whole Soviet government - the tactical nuclear weapons were finally crated and returned by sea back to the Soviet Union during December 1962.

This story has illuminated a chapter in history that has been partially closed for the past 50 years.

But it leaves us with a great respect for Mikoyan and his ability to judge and eventually contain an extremely dangerous situation which could have affected many millions of people.

Joe Matthews is a producer for Wild Iris TV, which has made a short film about the "secret" Cuban missile crisis

Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner has just set a new freefall skydiving record: 128,000 feet (24-1/4 mi,. 39 KM!) from a balloon over New Mexico (Roswell, natch) - still no confirmation if he broke the sound barrier, though. Liveblog HERE.

So do you think anyone sent him on his way with that old chestnut about "watch that first step...."?

1. Use this method sparingly, once a week or less.
2. Never insert any body parts directly into the body of the vacuum or directly in the hose of the vacuum.
3. Always use an insertion tube as a hose attachment to insure you do not come in contact with any moving parts (fan blades) or bacteria from the hose.
4. Always have the off switch in easy reach. ...

a name to remember, for all of a certain age.

http://www.newsdaily.com/stories/bre89d0jz-us-cambodia-sihanouk/

Packers win and I'm all the way up to a mighty 5-8 for the week! Another big week for BD (9-4), above water for Brutus and Sulla (7-6), and awful for the rest of us going into the Monday Night Chargers/Broncos game.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not one to tolerate the taste of bus tires without a nasty counterattack.